Soul and Body
by UESider84
Summary: Completely AU. Dan Humphrey and Blair Waldorf end up going to the same Ivy League university. Laughter, tears, and love ensue.
1. Prologue

The interior of The Thirsty Scholar was dim except for the tiny candles functioning as centerpieces on the black tables. Dan Humphrey was sitting at one of these tables trying to make conversation with a leggy blonde who was much more interested in her nails than the Stefan Zweig novella that he was reading.

"How do you distinguish yourself in a population where everyone has a genius IQ?" he asked out of frustration.

"You have a genius IQ?" the blonde suddenly lit up.

"Doesn't everybody?" Dan asked.

"No. Not everybody, but it is cool if you do."

"I do," Dan reiterated. "And, to be perfectly honest, it is extremely frustrating when you come to a place like Harvard and everyone is on the same page that you are. See, that's the problem of going to a school like this. When you go to a school where everybody stands out, you have to make yourself stand out ten times more."

"I don't really understand," the blonde scratched her head. "Why would you want to distinguish yourself if you're already at Harvard? Isn't that enough of an achievement?"

"I don't think you understand," Dan continued. "Yes, making it into Harvard is an achievement, but…"

"But what?"

"It isn't enough. I have to do something in order to get the attention of students around here."

"Like what?"

"Join a final club."

"What's a final club?"

Dan rolled his eyes. Was she really that stupid or was she pretending ?

"Well," he began with an audible sigh. "It's like a secret society. We do a lot of things that most people don't get to do."

"Like what?"

"Like inviting girls over to meet the next Fed chairman."

"That sounds like a lot of fun," the blonde teased. "Really. It does. Maybe if those clubs actually invited people like Anna Wintour. I would be interested."

"I'm sorry," Dan apologized. "But Anna Wintour is not a man and she's also not a Harvard graduate. Your point is invalid."

"Okay," the blonde sighed. "Aside from a finals club…"

"It's not a finals club. It's a final club. Singular."

"Sorry," the girl stammered slightly. "I didn't know that Harvard men could be so intimidating."

"I'm not intimidating," Dan apologized. "I'm just very goal oriented. There is a difference."

"I didn't mean it that way. It's just that the way you look and the way you sound are two completely different things."

"Oh? What do I look like then?"

"In all honesty," the blonde began and chomped down on her lip. "You look like…"

"A muppet," a stern voice echoed behind the blonde. It belonged to a brunette with fierce brown eyes.

"Excuse me?" Dan asked he swerved in the voice's direction.

"I couldn't help overhearing your pathetic conversation," the brunette continued as she brought her chair so that she and the blonde were seated shoulder to shoulder. "And, by the way, Stefan Zweig's _Chess Novel_ was not his best work. Read _Beware of Pity_."

"I have read _Beware of Pity_," Dan replied. "I've watched the movie version. Twice."

"Oh really?" the brunette mocked him. "Which version was that? The one where Edith actually lives at the end or the other where she throws herself off the tower like Zweig intended."

"The latter," Dan replied.

"Excuse me," the blonde turned towards the brunette, "but I really have to go study."

"You don't have to go," Dan said. "Just hang out here with us."

"I really don't want to," the blonde grabbed her purse and dropped a ten on the table. "Like I said, you're intimidating."

She didn't bother saying goodbye. She stomped out of the bar and allowed the door slam behind her.

"Thanks for rescuing me," Dan said as he pushed the menu towards the brunette who was now seated alone opposite him.

"No problem," the brunette replied. I tend to have sixth sense when it comes to disasters."

"Well, I'm glad that it came in handy. I'm Dan Humphrey," he extended his hand.

"Blair Waldorf."

For a while, Dan didn't say anything. He merely examined her in the same way that an artist examines a model before painting her likeness on a canvas. Her face was a perfect circle, her eyes the color of a morning coffee, and the translucent skin of a peach. It was a beautiful face, but it contained a mysterious sadness that he didn't quite understand.

Unlike the blonde, she wasn't gazing at her nails or spinning her straw in a glass of water. She was gazing at him, examining him, and trying to dig into his soul.

"Are you from around here?" Dan finally asked.

"Is anyone?" Blair replied.

"I actually meant…"

"I know what you meant, Humphrey. No. I'm not from around here at all. I'm from New York."

"New York," Dan repeated.

"Yes," Blair gave an audible sigh of annoyance. "Are you retarded or something?"

"No. It's just that I'm also from New York."

"Oh?" Blair slouched on the table, leaned her head on her fist, and tried to feign curiosity.

"Yes. I'm from…"

"Let me guess," Blair sat up again. "Williamsburg?"

"How did you know?"

"It's easy," Blair smiled. "The hideous plaid shirt, the jeans, the fact that you want to distinguish yourself in a population where everyone has a genius IQ."

"Do you get a kick out of making people feel bad?" Dan teased.

"If you think that I'm making you feel bad, you should call Nelly Yuki," Blair snapped.

"Nelly who?"

"It doesn't matter," Blair brushed his question away with a flick of her hand. "She was just someone who got in my way."

"Then I'll make sure that I don't get in your way," Dan smirked.

"Oh please," Blair rolled her eyes. "You're not in my way. If I was in my natural habitat, I wouldn't be this close to you without a tetanus shot."

"You have a natural habitat? I didn't know that you were a tigress."

"I'm not. I just from a place where I don't have to suffer fools."

"Then why are you suffering me?"

"Because I think that you deserve better than that BU hooker that just walked out the door."

"BU hooker? How did you…?"

"I know a lot of things, Humphrey," Blair replied. "And if you become my friend, you might learn a few more."

* * *

_Continue? _


	2. Regret

"_In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour." – Stefan Zweig._

Dan's walk home from The Thirsty Scholar should have taken him five minutes, but it took thrice that long. He was so intellectually stimulated by Blair that he wanted to replay the encounter in his mind. As he crossed Harvard Square, passed the library, and entered the campus proper, it seemed to him like something out of a novel: a man bored with his current is rescued by a woman who possesses all of the qualities that he has dreamed about since he was a boy.

He had to admit that Blair would make a good friend. She was stylish, passionate, ambitious, and sarcastic. She wasn't that different from some of the other girls that he had dated during his high school years at Trinity, but there was something which made him curious. Whether it was possible to give that something a name, he didn't know. He had noticed it, however. Over and over again during their three and a half hour conversation, it had made its appearance unannounced, fluttered around her face like a butterfly, and fluttered back into the night.

In the cool October night, he thought that it was melancholy. And who wouldn't be melancholy in Boston during that particular month? Everything seemed tinged with sadness from the orange, red, and yellow leaves to the indie music that was played in the coffee shops.

Yet melancholia was a poetic concept. It was the muse that fluttered in the back of a man's mind as he scrawled out scene after scene on the subway or composed song lyrics in a dimly lit basement while staring at an empty couch. Blair's problem wasn't melancholia. It was something else. Something that was much darker, blacker, and much more insidious. A sadness which seemed to penetrate every cell of her being and which had turned her into the person she was.

He tossed the conjectures around in his head as he made his way up the stairs. He inserted his key casually into the lock and then pushed the door in. His roommate, Nate Archibald, was lying on the blood red couch and eating Chinese food.

"You want some?" Nate asked in greeting as he roused himself and waved a white container in Dan's direction.

"No, I'm fine."

"Suit yourself."

He walked into his corner of the suite and closed the door. He examined the bare walls, the empty cork board, the half empty closet, the desk stacked with books. Loneliness swept over him like a grey cloud.

He felt restless. He began pacing around the room, but found that it didn't help at all. He sat down at his laptop and opened the short story he had been assigned for his fiction seminar. He was stuck on page one. He wrote what he thought was a decent paragraph, shut down the computer, and walked out into the common room.

Nate was still eating Chinese food and flipping through the channels on their television. Although Dan could never tell Nate this to his face, he was the laziest Harvard man he had ever met.

"Coming out for seconds?" Nate joked as he straightened out.

"No. I wanted to talk to you about something."

"Oh," Nate turned off the tv and slid the take out container into the garbage can. "What's up?"

"It's this girl," Dan began.

"Girl?" Nate sat up bolt upright. "You mean you actually liked…"

"Not her," Dan continued. "It was someone else. She… I don't really know how to say it."

"Just spit it out, man."

"All right," Dan took a deep breath. "She just showed up out of nowhere, skewered my date, and then we had the deepest conversation that I've ever had in my entire life. I've never met that kind of woman before and I honestly don't know if I'll ever meet her again."

"Did she give you her number?"

"No, but she did give me her name."

"And that is?"

"Blair Waldorf."

"I know her," Nate said as his face lit up in recognition. "I actually know her really, really well."

"You do?" Dan was completely incredulous. How could his slacker roommate know somebody as intelligent and vivacious as Blair Waldorf?

"She and I went to school together."

"You did?"

"Yup."

Without any further prompting, Dan began asking questions in the same manner that a machine gun has a tendency to spew bullets. They came out one after another. He asked Nate about her parents, her mother's career, whether Blair had any siblings, or any ex-boyfriends that could possibly track him down and crucify him if they found that he and Blair were anything more than good friends.

Nate's answers were short and rather laconic. Blair's parents were divorced, she was an only child, she didn't have any siblings that he knew of, and her last boyfriend had been sent to military school because he was an embarrassment to the family. The only friend that she had was studying literature at Brown. It was everything that he could relate off the top of his head.

Dan could tell by the way that Nate's mouth didn't match his eyes that there was something which he wasn't telling him as he gave him these laconic answers. There was more.

"I need to know more," Dan pressed him.

"Why?" Nate asked surprised. "I told you everything I know."

"You haven't."

"How do you know that, Sherlock Holmes?"

"Because your eyes are doing that thing."

"What thing?"

"When they don't match your mouth."

"You caught me," Nate raised his hands in the air. "What do you want to know?"

"She kind of seemed really sad tonight," Dan explained hesitantly.

"Maybe she had too much homework to do," Nate teased.

"No. She just seemed, I don't know, depressed."

"Depressed?"

"Yeah, but it wasn't like she was sobbing uncontrollably. It was just there. Like an aura. Do you know what could make her that sad?"

"You don't want to know," Nate suddenly became defensive.

"Come on," Dan urged him. "You can tell me. It's not like I'm going to broadcast it in _The Crimson_."

"It's not really my place," Nate replied. "You can ask her yourself, but I'm sure that she won't say anything."

"Why?"

"She's very protective of her privacy," Nate noted.

"Do you know what it is?" Dan pressed him impatiently.

"I do, but I can't say."

"Can you give me a hint?

Nate grabbed the remote and turned on the television. Shark Week was on. He didn't speak to Dan for the rest of that night and Dan didn't bother to ask. If it was something particularly messy, he was better off not knowing whatever that deep dark secret was.

**Blair was lying on her stomach **with her telephone pressed against her ear. Serena had already called her four times that evening while she was out with Dan. She then took a rest for three hours and then called again. This time Blair felt obliged to pick up. Now, she was listening to Serena's cheerful prattled as she described Brown in exhaustive. "The campus is so gorgeous right now, B.," Serena gushed. "You'd love the colors. And the classes… My literature course is depressing right now. The professor is making us read Tennyson and I'm crying on every second page. It's ridiculous. Anyway, how are you?"

It was a simple enough question, but Blair didn't know how to answer it. If she said that she was miserable, Serena would coddle her to no end and tell her that things would eventually get better. If she explained to her childhood best friend that things were good, Serena wouldn't pay attention and would probably continue talking about how wonderful Brown was. Since Serena only had an on and off switch with nothing in between, Blair decided to take her chances and use the lesser of two evils.

"Things are fine," she said quietly.

"That's great, B. I'm so happy for you. You'll never guess who I met on campus yesterday."

"Who?" Blair rolled her eyes expecting to hear the name of one of Serena's numerous ex-boyfriends.

"Carter Baizen."

Blair was bolt upright. She could hear her heart pounding inside her head. She put the phone, walked over to the bathroom, and slammed the door as hard as she could. She opened the medicine cabinet and pulled out a tiny, brown Valerian pill. She swallowed it without water and felt it glide down to the bottom of her throat. She closed her eyes and counted backwards from ten just like her therapist had told her to do when she was under tremendous stress. She did so, but it didn't help. She could see the boy's vulpine face. On the second try, she opened her eyes. The panic attack was gone in a flash.

She went back to the bed and resumed her former position. She took a deep breath.

"B., are you okay?" Serena's voice had jumped an octave with concerned.

"I'm fine," Blair responded as matter of factly as she could. "I'm sorry. I just had to go and do something. You were talking about Carter."

"He came to see me," Serena explained. "He wants me to help me find my father."

"Don't do it, Serena," Blair's voice had assumed a hard edge. "Just don't."

"B., don't be dramatic," Serena tried to soothe her. "He has the best of intentions. He's not at all like…"

"I know," Blair took a deep breath trying as hard as she could to prevent herself from hyperventilating. "I just don't want you to do something stupid like get a Greek flag tattooed on your forehead or, I don't know, getting inebriated and having sex with the person you meet because you thought your boyfriend was cheating on you with your best friend and then ending up regretting it for the rest of your natural life."

"B.," Serena cooed. "I can take care of myself. I promise."

"Then tell me that he's not asking you to ditch school so that you can gallivant all over Europe with him."

"No," Serena reassured her. "He just said that he wanted to help. That's all."

Blair continued listening until Serena hung up the phone. She knew, of course, that young men like Carter Baizen did not always have the best of intentions. From her own experience, she knew that when someone said they wanted to "help" that helping wasn't really their primary motivation. It was something else and she had experienced it first-hand.

She didn't remember exactly how it had started or why. One moment her world was exactly as it should have been. The next, it was turned upside down. She remembered the day when she had picked up the phone to call Serena and ask her something. Years ago, they had called each other every day even though they would see each other at school. They talked about stupid girlish things like what the newest finger nail polish was or whether the _Cosmo _quiz tests were accurate. That day, however, Serena didn't pick up her land line or cell. Both lines were dead. She called Lily, Serena's mother, and asked her what had happened. The reply was laconic and wistful: "Serena has decided to go to boarding school. It will be better for her."

"Of course," Blair had replied mechanically. "It will be better for her."

Of course, Serena's disappearance was only the beginning. A couple of months later, her mother called her into her bedroom. Eleanor was staring at the heavy scarlet canopy above her head. Her eyes seemed blank. However, they were focused on a single dot so that she wouldn't feel obliged to look at her daughter.

"What did you want to talk to me about?" Blair asked as she seated herself next to the bed.

"Well, dear," Eleanor said trying to soften the blow as well as she could. "Your father and I are getting a divorce."

Blair wondered if her mother was speaking Chinese.

"Mother…"

"A divorce," Eleanor repeated as she raised herself and gave her a cold look. "Apparently, he thought that one of my models was much more important than his own family."

Eventually, Harold moved out of the penthouse to a suite at the St. Regis Hotel and took his bulldog with him. Eleanor decided to get herself an eyelift. Blair was left alone in the penthouse with Dorota. On certain days, she would sit alone in the library with a cell phone in her hand. Her fingers would slide along the numbers, but she never pressed the tiny green call button. Why should she even bother? Serena would never pick up.

She tried looking for solace in Nate Archibald, her childhood best friend and boyfriend. They would sit together on a swing set in Central Park. She would relay to him everything that had happened during the course of the day. He would listen to her, but his eyes were constantly wandering to other buildings. "Nate!" she would shout at him from time to time. "Where is your mind?"

"My mind is right here," he would say and stare off right back into space.

She did other things. She threw herself into her school work. She began publishing articles on fashion in the school newspaper. She substituted her mother at charity auctions. She even volunteered at a shelter for homeless dogs on the Lower East Side although she couldn't stand the stench of their excrement. She needed something, anything to distract her from the procession of lawyers that kept coming to the penthouse at odd hours of the evening while Eleanor was holding court and they would discuss what piece of furniture belonged to whom.

The curtain fell on the divorce. Blair's life assumed the same normalcy that it had previously had. She continued her reign as queen bee, continued her charity, and aced all of her classes. She eventually forgot about Serena and found herself seeing her father every once in a while. That was the way things were and, somehow, Blair had come to the conclusion that this state of affairs would continue indefinitely.

On a bright afternoon during a cocktail hour at the Waldorf's, everything was turned upside down once again. Blair was with Nate in her bedroom trying to lose her virginity for the umpteenth time when Eleanor announced that Serena had returned. There were no words spoken between them because there wasn't any time. The blonde ran off to an engagement.

Eventually, Blair found out that Serena and Nate had been seeing each other all along. She tried to win him back. She held a masked ball. She told him that she loved him, but it all to no avail. He always chose Serena over her because he was in love with her. There was nothing Blair could do about it except lash out and humiliate her best friend every way she knew how. From exposing her dirty laundry at cotillion to calling her a whore and a liar, Blair had an arsenal of weapons that she could use against the person that she had considered her sister.

Serena didn't heel, however. She decided that if Blair wanted to play dirty, she would do the same thing. There was an infamous incidental on the field during a hockey tournament when Serena nearly broke her best friend's leg. There was also a luncheon at which Blair managed to convince a captivated audience that Serena was the one who was at the Ostroff Center rather than her younger brother.

The cycle went for months on end until they decided to call a truce. It was a temporary band aid, but it worked. They were friends again even if Blair didn't want to forgive Serena for sleeping with Nate.

He made his entrance around this time. His name rhymed with a certain four letter word that dictionaries described as a euphemism for sexual intercourse. He was rich, mysterious, and had bedded his first woman at the age of twelve. When he came to fill the void left by Nate, she found herself drawn to him like a moth to a flame.

The first time they had sex was in the back of a limousine after Nate had once again chosen Serena. Blair had gotten herself inebriated, gone to the boy's night club, and had done a burlesque dance on the stage. They were sitting together in the back of the vehicle looking back at each other. She remembered the way his eyes devoured her and how he ran his fingers up her thigh. She leant forward to kiss and he asked her a question that forever changed the entire course of her young life: "Are you sure?" As a drunken and semi-depressed sixteen year old what else could she say? She didn't say anything. She kissed him.

For someone who had always thought that her first time would take place on a bed spread with Egyptian cotton and goose down pillows, losing her virginity in a moving vehicle was about as low as she could go. However, Blair was as completely smitten by him as he was with her. He never left her side and she never left his. They had sex on the kitchen counter, the floor, her bed, and any other room where they knew any adult wouldn't be able to intrude.

She liked him, but there were times when she wondered whether his feelings for her were genuine. There were days when he wouldn't come and see her or when he would disappear for weeks on end so that he could ravish some other woman. One afternoon, she called him into her bedroom and gave him an ultimatum. "If what we have is real," she had spat. "You can't see anyone else anymore."

He only grinned.

Of course, her liaison with him couldn't remain a secret forever. When it finally came out in the midst of what Blair thought was a pregnancy, the entire Upper East Side was in an uproar. At school, the girls decided that a queen who was stupid enough to have sex with Chuck Bass was unworthy of being their queen. Nate couldn't believe his ears and gave Chuck a bloody nose. Serena didn't speak to her for a month. Blair ran away to France and visited her father.

When she returned, she reclaimed everything that was hers to begin with. By hook or by crook, she found herself once again at the top of the social ladder at Constance and among the girls. Nate eventually came around and made reluctant peace with Chuck. Serena did the same because she was forced to accept him as her half-brother.

In fairy tales, there would have been a happily ever after at this point in Blair's history. Life, however, had other plans. Over and over again, she found herself betrayed by her handsome dark prince. When she went to Italy for the summer, she expected that he would come. He never did. When his father died and she did absolutely everything in her power to console him including begging Eleanor to give up the guest room so that he could stay with her, he ran away.

Any person with a sane mind would have asked themselves why Blair Waldorf, the girl who had absolutely everything going for her, would put up with a philandering child. Her answer was always the same: "Because I love him." But was it really love when he tortured her by bringing other women around and kissing them in public as part of a game? Was it really love when she was forced to stoop down to his level just so that she could keep his attention? Other people would have answered in the negative, Blair could only do so in the positive because it was the only kind of love she knew.

It ended the way it began. Except this time it was in a penthouse suite at one of his hotels and he wasn't there. She was there as part of a bargain. She would sleep with his uncle and he would get the Empire back. So she did. The next morning she called him and said that she never wanted to speak to him again. "You shouldn't be so sure," he said in his cockiest manner. "The bitch always comes back to her vomit."

The thoughts rolled in the back of her mind and brought tears to her eyes as she listened to the gentle hum of cars outside her apartment window. At around two o'clock in the morning, she went over to her desk. Gazing out of her window, she could see the moonlight bathing the white clock tower in the center of the campus while its spire seemed to pierce the diamond-like stars.

Glancing to her left, she saw another figure leaning out of a window four floors below.

Was she thinking the same thoughts? Had she had the same experiences?

Blair would never know. She slammed the window shut, pulled the covers over her body, and went to sleep.

* * *

_A/N: Thank you so much to those who alerted, favorited, and reviewed the story so far! You've inspired me to continue. What did you think of this chapter? Good, bad, indifferent? Let me know and thanks in advance! _


	3. Traps

"_When you set a trap, try not to fall in it yourself." – Hungarian proverb. _

From the moment Dan walked into the art history classroom he felt lost. The classroom was large amphitheater filled with maple chairs. There were exactly two hundred and fifty. The professor's lectern was located on a dais in the center and there was a large screen in the back so that he could illustrate his points. Apparently, the projector was hidden somewhere in the ceiling and the remote control was hidden in the dais.

Never before had Dan been in a classroom that was this large. At Trinity, the classes were always capped at fifteen. In his senior year creative writing seminar, there had been only eight other young men who were writing poetry and short stories. Here at Harvard, one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the country, it seemed that every third student he met was writing a novel, a chapbook, or a collection of short stories.

He had learned over the course of the last two days that classes at Harvard were never limited to the lectures which the professor would give for his audiences. There were always a section that met that same afternoon in one of the libraries or in another building altogether where a graduate student would preside over the group of students and review with them everything they had learned over the course of the previous two hours for another two hours. Every student's class time was doubled. If the section teacher assigned homework, the two hours necessary to complete one day's worth of homework would be turned into four or even eight

The previous night, after his conversation with Nate about Blair, Dan had been sitting at his desk until four o'clock the following morning typing furiously at his computer. Was he writing his great American novel or that essay for _Vanity Fair_ about New York private schools that had been commissioned two weeks before? Not at all. He was slaving over his calculus homework, writing out his lab homework for his astronomy class, and then writing up a report in Latin on the First Book of Virgil's _Aeneid_.

Compared to Nate, whose study habits included multi-tasking while watching the TV and checking his e-mail fifty times an hour, Dan's were rock solid. Ever since his parents had enrolled him at Trinity during the eighth grade, he had stayed with the same routine. As soon as he got home from class, he would commence his homework and not rise from where he was until everything was completed. Some people would have called these habits obsessive. He viewed them as excellent.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the class began filling up with students. He had seen some of them around campus, but most of the others were strangers. Some of them wore stylish suits and ties, others wore paint-spattered jeans and clothes that would have been more appropriate at a punk rock concert.

He made his way down to the front row and found a seat that was facing the dais. From this particular angle, the professor would be a colossus the size of Michelangelo's _David_.

He took a pencil, a spiral notebook , and shut off his phone. He dropped his briefcase onto the floor.

The moment he leaned back into the chair, he felt someone tap him on the shoulder.

Turning around, he noticed a girl wearing a checkered coat, a white blouse, a black skirt, leather gloves, fire engine red stockings, and six inch heels. Her eyes were covered by sunglasses.

"Can I help you?" he asked.

"Yes, you can. Could you move over one seat?"

"I'm sorry, but seats are not assigned here," he said trying to make his stubbornness apparent in the most delicate way.

"I'm not stupid, Humphrey," the girl's voice turned steely. "I always sit front row center."

Recognizing Blair as the possessor of the voice, he moved one seat over. He watched her take the coat off and draped it over the back of the chair, but the sunglasses stayed. No matter how many winks he gave, she refused to take them off. He wondered if she was hung over or, worse, had forgotten to put on her makeup.

He was about to say something to that effect when lights in the lecture hall began to dim. The buzzing in his ears which had begun ten minutes before metamorphosed into expectant silence.

At least a two thousand pairs of eyes were fixed on the stage where the deity would appear in all of his radiant glory. Dan remembered a time to a New York Philharmonic concert and sat at the edge of his seat waiting for the conductor to appear. He was expecting one of the great high priests of music, but the man who appeared was short and rather gangly with a nervous tick that made him wink at the most inappropriate.

The wait seemed to take hours, but the professor did appear. He was a relative tall man dressed in a pressed navy suit with a pearl stickpin tie. He looked over his audience imperiously through his bespectacled brown eyes and approached the lectern where he placed his papers with a loud crash. "That was to get your attention," he noted slyly and then pulled out copies of the syllabus that two young women seated at the end of each row were asked to distribute. "This," he remarked pointing at the fifteen pages of cream paper, "is to keep your attention."

The professor introduced himself as Dr. Wolfgang Schneider, one of the foremost experts on Renaissance art and proceeded to list his publications. Dan saw a smile of recognition on Blair's face. Unlike most of the other students, she knew who he was.

There were the usual preliminaries that preceded any class on the first day of school. Dr. Schneider went over the rules, the projects, and the papers that would be due. He explained to the students that each one of them would have to purchase one art book and visit the Boston Museum of Fine Arts' Titian exhibit and write a report on that. "I don't want you to tell me what you saw," he emphasized. "I want you to tell me what you saw, how it made you feel, and what you believe the artist is trying to say. Any questions?"

Blair's hand immediately shot up. "With all due respect, Dr. Schneider," she began. "Is it truly necessary for us to talk about how we feel about a Titian? A Titian is a Titian is a Titian."

"Miss," Dr. Schneider gazed down on her angrily. "A Titian is a Titian, but art is ultimately what you and I invest in it."

Blair raised her hand again in protest, but Dr. Schneider had moved to a leggy, Scotch red-head who questioned him whether Early Modern wasn't a more appropriate name for the art that they were to examine over the course of the semester. "You say potato and I say potahto," Schneider with a twinkle in his eye. "I was taught that the proper term is Renaissance and that is the term we will use even if Early Modern is a much more accurate name."

Other questions followed. It was only after Dr. Schneider had explained his attendance policy for the fourth time that he took out a legal pad and asked his now captive audience: "In his treatise on painting, Leonardo Da Vinci states that there are ten things you can see and which are easily seen with the naked eye. What are they?"

Instantly, fifty hands rose in the air.

Dr. Schneider scanned the audience and called on the red-headed alto. "Yes, Miss Potahto."

"Darkness and light, body and colour, shape and location, distance and closeness, motion and rest," the red-head replied.

"Correct."

"With all due respect to Miss Potatoe," Blair had raised her hand and continued without Dr. Schneider calling on her. "I believe that the translation is incorrect. According to my translation, they are darkness and brightness, substance and colour, form and place, remoteness and nearness, movement and rest."

"Miss…" Dr. Schneider began.

"Waldorf," Blair corrected him refusing to be called by the pseudonym of an artist she detested.

"Miss Waldorf," Dr. Schneider continued. "I asked for the ten things you can see as named by Leonardo. I did not ask for a translation. If I wanted that, I would be teaching an Italian class."

"But…" Blair's voice in protest.

"It's not worth it," Dan gave her a side whisper. "You can talk to him after class about it."

He sat back in his chair fully expecting that she would either completely fly off the handle and state outright exactly what she thought of Dr. Schneider or that she would turn on him and tell him that it was a battle well worth the fight. Neither of these things happened. Blair took her pen back, smiled graciously at Dr. Schneider, and began taking notes in a florid hand that made Dan's look like the chicken scrawl it actually was.

"**Can you believe what that Scot said?" **Blair exclaimed as they made their way to the door. "It was like she wanted to show me up. The gall. The..."

"I know that you don't take advice from strangers," Dan began. "But she did what Dr. Schneider asked her. She answered the question."

"She didn't just answer the question," Blair's voice rose another octave in annoyance. "Didn't you see the provocative way she crossed those pale legs of hers as she answered the question? It was like she was bribing him!"

"She was answering the question," Dan continued in the same calm voice that he had used before. "That's all."

"No. She wasn't."

"Yes, she was."

"Fine, Humphrey," Blair huffed. "But she used the wrong translation."

"The wrong translation?" Dan rolled his eyes. There was no winning with her.

"Yes. The one that I've read is much more poetic, don't you think? Hers was so commonplace. It was almost idiotic."

"It sounded fine to me."

"You did not just say that," Blair's face suddenly went up in flames as he opened the lecture hall door for her. "You of all people should know better than to acknowledge hackwork like that."

"Come on, Blair," Dan cajoled her as he touched her hand to calm her down.

"No," Blair pulled herself away. "I still think that you should have supported my view."

"Why?"

"Because you're a poet."

"Great. Do you have anything else that you want to say about what happened back there or are we through for now?"

"Don't you remember what I told you last night about people that get in my way?"

"You didn't go into specifics."

"I destroy them," Blair stated flatly.

They continued wandering through the building, making their way down to flights of stairs, and found themselves at the front door. Blair was still talking, but Dan wasn't listening. He was much more focused on the last thing she had said. He wondered how it was possible for someone so intelligent and beautiful to be so full of herself as to think that she could destroy another person simply because she didn't happen to use the correct translation when answering a simple question on the first day of class. Was it possible that this young woman whom he had met the other night at The Thirsty Scholar was nothing more than a conceited, spoiled brat who thrived on watching other people suffer? And if she was, what would account for the anger that seemed to pour of out of every cell in her body as she recounted over and over that infamous incident? Was she obsessed? Was she possessed? Was there something else that Nate was keeping from him and not telling him?

The mystery seemed to deepen before him. There wasn't just one Blair Waldorf. Like a Russian nesting doll or a Chinese trick box, there was always another Blair Waldorf that climbed out as soon as the doll was opened. Over lunch at a vegetarian restaurant at Harvard Square, her mood had shifted entirely and she had begun picking his mind about Audrey Hepburn movies. Considering that he derided them as stupid and girly, he failed miserably at the task.

"Oh, Humphrey," Blair's voice dripped with sweet, saccharine pity. "We're going to have to remedy that situation at some point, aren't we?"

"Why would you want to change my taste in movies?" He questioned. "I like _The Double Life of Veronique_."

"You only like _The Double Life of Veronique_ because that is the only thing you have been exposed to," Blair noted. "If you watched some of the movies I like, you might find that you enjoy them."

"I'm sorry, Blair, but what could I possibly enjoy in a musical version of _Pygmalion_?"

"I don't know, Humphrey," she leaned her head against her gloved hand and sent him a wistful smile. "Maybe you would learn that people are not always what they appear to be and that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover."

"What on earth is that supposed to mean?" Dan noted sarcastically.

"That you shouldn't judge others based on the movies they watch or the people they decide to excoriate."

"First of all, I'm not judging you," Dan protested.

"Oh really? Then why did you go out of your way to defend that Scottish piece of trash?"

"Blair," he said looking her straight in the eye. "I was just pointing out how ridiculous it was for you to even go after someone just because they answered a question before you did and with a worse translation."

"It's not ridiculous," Blair pointed out.

"It is."

"Look," Blair sighed. "I really think that you're being the ridiculous one by not seeing that incident from my perspective."

"And why should I?" Dan's voice had suddenly become angry. "Why should I even care?"

"Because you and I are friends."

"We're not friends," Dan snapped. "Three hours of conversation at a bar does not a friendship make."

"True, but even acquaintances support each other. Haven't you read _The Post Office_ _Girl_?"

"Of course, I have."

"Then you know," Blair's voice had taken on a didactic strain, "that the baron tried to protect that young woman from the rumors and even warned her about them. Isn't that what friends do, Humphrey?"

"Yes, that's true," Dan conceded.

"Then why aren't you supporting me in taking her down?"

"I really don't see why you need to take her down over something like this," Dan protested. "Look, I don't punch guys that look at me the wrong way. Do I?"

"No," Blair agreed.

"And I don't get ticked when someone answers a question before I do, right?"

"Right," she sighed.

"All that I'm saying is that you should give that girl a chance. Like I said in class, pick your battles."

"But what if…?"

"Don't torture yourself, Blair," he patted her hand. "She's not worth it."

* * *

_A/N: Thanks to all of the fabulous Dairlings that have been reading, favoriting, reviewing, and following this story. You motivate to churn out the chapters much faster than I ever did before. Please let me know what you thought of this one. Did you like it? Do you think Blair will take down the red-head? Please let me know what you think in a review! _


	4. Friendship

_A/N: I'm very sorry that it took me three weeks to publish the next chapter, but here it is. Thanks to all of those that have supported the story. As always, let me know what you think in a review._

* * *

Dan was right. Blair had to choose her battles and the red head was simply not worth her time. She might raise her hand and ask Dr. Schneider's every fifth her question in her Gaelic-tinged English, but that was it. She wasn't in Blair's other classes or sections. She didn't live in the same apartment building. There was nothing between except for a slight tussle on the first day of class and that was all.

In the past, Blair would have gone after that poor girl with a machete. There were hundreds of young women at Blair's alma mater who could tell her horror stories. Th ones that didn't make it in on Draft Day because they wore the wrong type of shoes or because their parents vacationed at the wrong resort; the ones who were taken under her wing only to be thrown out when they crossed her; and, of course, there were those whom she ignored and mistreated simply because they were not worthy of her company.

If the red head had been a member of her class at Constance, Blair would have humiliated her in the worst possible way. She would have sent the details of her private life onto Gossip Girl and then watched as the poor young woman's reputation was wrecked for the entire world to see. It had happened many times before. Luckily for the girl, Gossip Girl wasn't active in Boston and she wasn't interested in Blair "Weakling" Waldorf anymore.

Blair was sitting in a study room in the library looking over an album of Michelangelo sketches for her art history class. It was the middle of October now. The trees on the Harvard campus were beginning to shed their red, yellow, or orange robes. Everywhere, there was a distinct smell of death and decay. Long before the first winter snows would descend and the natural world would go to sleep for the next few months, there was this final farewell. The moment when nature held its own funeral and human beings reveled in her dead members as they tossed them over their heads and played in them

Blair had always loved the autumn. As a young girl, she and Dorota would go to Central Park together after school so that she could play in the leaves. Sometimes, they were joined by Harold who would bury her up to her chin in yellow and red foliage. She would laugh, she would smile, she would flap her hands this way and that before she would emerge out of the leaves with an angelic smile on her face.

As she became older, autumn continued to hold her in its thrall. It was the season when most of the tourists left and New Yorkers finally had the city to themselves for a spell. Before school started at Constance, there were numerous parties that the children and their parents. Nate's parents, Captain and Mrs. Archibald, always held the most lavish ones in their magnificent town house on East 92nd Street near the Russian Orthodox cathedral. The tea was always poured into Romanov dinner ware that had been salvaged during the Revolution and the champagne was always poured into crystal flutes.

That was all gone now, Blair thought. The Captain had been sent to jail years ago for embezzlement and fraud. Nate's maternal grandfather, Senator Vanderbilt, got Nate and his mother through the next two years. But it wasn't enough and, at one point, Anne Archibald had to put up the monogrammed Romanov dinner set, the crystal flutes, and the Titian self-portrait for sale so that she and Nate could keep a roof over their heads. "Oh," Eleanor had said as she placed one of the Archibald's Faberge eggs on the mantelpiece in her bedroom, "how the mighty have fallen."

The parties were almost always followed by the rush to buy the best clothes for the upcoming school year. Blair and Serena always spent the final weekend at Bendel's and Tiffany's buying as much jewelry, dresses, and headbands as their parents' budgets would allow. Sometimes, they took Nate along for the ride. He was miserable. He spent most of those excursions staring at himself in one of the men's dressing rooms and rearranging his hair. Chuck Bass, obviously, couldn't be bothered. The weekend before school was when he had the annual Bass orgy at The Palace.

This autumn, however, there hadn't been any shopping excursions or parties. Brown started earlier than Harvard. By the time Blair went to Bendel's, Lily's town car was taking Serena through Connecticut into Rhode Island. That was the way things were now, Blair reflected, and that was probably the way that things would always be. Her childhood was over, adulthood was finally at hand.

The longer she stared out the window at the stately brick buildings that made up the Harvard campus, the more aware she was of her own reflection. She always hated her face. Although a poet laureate had once compared it to an open white lily, all Blair could see was its ugly oval shape, the slightly almond shaped eyes, and the chin that jutted ever so slightly forward. There was nothing beautiful about it on its own. That's why she used a lacquered box full of makeup

"Blair."

Dan was standing behind her. His right hand resting on the chair.

"Is this a bad time?" he asked as she turned around and tried to smile at him.

"It's fine."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, Humphrey. Are you deaf?"

"No, but you do realize that you've been crying."

Blair swatted the tears away with her hand as if they were mosquitoes.

"I'm sorry," she sighed. "I've just been thinking about things. That's all."

"What kind of things?"

"This is a study date, Humphrey. Not a therapist's office."

"As your friend, don't I have a right to ask you what's wrong?" Dan asked as he pulled out a chair and seated himself comfortably across from her.

"I don't want to discuss it, Humphrey."

"Then why is it making you this upset?"

"I don't know," Blair sighed. In the past, she could yell at someone and they would go away. He wasn't going away. He was sitting there drumming his fingers against the top of the table, waiting for her to say whatever came next.

She wanted to tell him about Chuck and the hotel. However, she wasn't sure. Sometimes, there had been an echo of judgment in his voice when she mentioned her past. It was as if he was sizing her up and trying to figure out who she was without giving her a chance to say anything at all. What would he think when she told him that she had been traded for a hotel so that her boyfriend could get it back? What would he think when she explained that she had slept with his sleazy uncle not once, but twice or that…? No, she couldn't tell him. Not right now. Not ever it was better if he didn't know anything at all.

"Anyway," she said sliding one of the thick burgundy albums across the table. "I was thinking that we could about Michelangelo's sketches in the context of his religious views and Counter-Reformation Europe."

"Actually," Dan slid the album back towards her, "I think it would be better if we talked about what is bothering you."

"No. We won't."

"Yes, we will."

"Humphrey," her voice had reached yet another octave of exasperation. "What part of study date do you not understand?"

"And what part of friendship do you not understand?"

"Look," Blair threw her hands up in frustration. "This presentation has to be done by the end of the week. We can't meet any other time."

"What about tomorrow afternoon?" Dan offered. "We don't have sections then."

"I have my yoga class."

"Yoga class?" He raised an incredulous eyebrow. "I didn't know you did yoga."

"I just started. Come on, Humphrey. We have to get this done."

"No," Dan nodded. "We're not starting anything until we get to the bottom of this."

"All right," Blair took a deep breath, "but you can't tell anyone."

She told him the story piece by piece, layer by layer. Sh had e seen Meryl Streep do it in _Sophie's Choice_. Perhaps, she could do the same. She couldn't. She wasn't that glamorous actress. She couldn't allow a couple of tears to appear at the end so that Dan would see her pale face transfigured against the sun rise over the Brooklyn Bridge. As she guided him deeper and deeper in the caverns of her psyche, she found herself tearing up more and more until she lay her head on the desk. Her entire body was convulsed with sobs.

After what seemed like hours, she felt his hand gently stroking her on the back. Chuck had never stroked her this way. He had grabbed her, pressed her against walls, twisted and contorted her body into every imaginable sexual position, but he had never comforted her. How could he? He had never known what love and comfort were, but here was someone who clearly did.

When she had recovered sufficiently, she allowed him to hold her hand. Neither of them said anything. The silence between them said more than a volume of Shakespeare could. They listened as the leaves rustled outside, someone played Bach on a violin, an Ingrid Michaelson song being blared through the speakers of an apartment building. A moment of eternity when two hearts beat together and two souls seemed united by something other than friendship. An unnameable something that transcended Harvard, Boston, Manhattan, Williamsburg, and even death, but which neither of them could name.

They went back to their report. They looked through the sketches, found a Crucifixion that was decent enough, outlined everything together, and wrote out a spec as quickly as they could. They wandered through the stacks together pulling down volume after volume on Michelangelo by Condivi, Zollner, Vasari, and every other author they could think of. They wrote down the titles, digitally photographed the pages they needed, and took them back only to return with books on Vittoria Colonna and the earliest edition of Michelangelo's poetry.

It was eight o'clock when they made their way down the library steps towards Harvard Square. In the night, the place seemed to take off its mask and become a series of dimly lit taverns, bars, and hookah dens where students sprawled on couches while watching belly dancers gyrating in costumes that seemed to tinkle with their movement.

They walked arm in arm towards The Thirsty Scholar, the place where they had first met, and sat down in a plush booth near the bar. The place was as dim as always, but there was something inviting and comfortable like an old friend who always seems willing to listen.

They sat there for hours without saying anything at all. The looks they exchanged said everything. For the first time in years, Blair felt that she didn't have to put on a show for anyone. With this young bohemian, she could be herself and she could talk to him about anything because he would never judge her, never tell her that she was ugly or stupid or a hideous, conceited spoiled brat. He didn't see those things in her not because he was blind, or deaf, or an idiot, but because he had looked into her soul and seen that the real Blair Waldorf was not the person that she was pretending to be.

There is a certain moment in every friendship when things begin to deepen and evolve. It is not one that can easily be realized by either party, but it is there. It is that time when people are bound to each other because they have come to an understanding. For Dan Humphrey and Blair Waldorf that understanding came on that afternoon and things would never be the same for either of them ever again.


End file.
